Are you choosing a voiceover for your project?

Research has shown than male voices are associated with neutrality and are particularly great for conveying authoritative, factual information. While female voices are more associated with nurturing and compassion. However, researchers found that in terms of ‘forcefulness’, there wasn’t much difference- if any- between the two.

No matter the style, tone or accent you’re after, Neil is a highly versatile voice over artist with his own recording studio. He has over fifteen years experience and has worked on a wide range of projects. Voicing young to middle aged males with a neutral English accent, his voice is warm, friendly and highly professional sounding.

As a male voiceover artist with studio he offers the complete voice over service! This includes preparing the script, voicing at his studio in London, England, along with editing and processing of the finished voiceover. As for the price, not as expensive as you may think. The words ‘cheap voiceover’ are nasty and don’t do the service that Neil offers justice. But, his price is cheap, so lets call it competitively priced. No other voice over artist will make the process easier or more straightforward and at a competitive price (and definitely much cheaper than going through a voice over agent)!

Previous clients include British Airways, Sky and Toyota, with projects including everything from on-hold messages to animations.

Its been nearly a year since I updated my voiceover showreel, thats how busy 2015 was…and the start of 2016 hasn’t been much quieter (I’m not complaining). I believe its important to update reels regularly, keep them fresh, but then there are only so many hours in a voiceovers day!

The New Voiceover Showreel

As per usual, this reel was created in house and showcases a small selection of projects I’ve worked on over the past year. All voiceovers were recorded at my studio and editing facilities in London, England. So, without further a do, press play and have a listen…

About this Voiceover Showreel

This reel shows off a more natural voiceover style in many of the clips, through experience over the last year I’ve discovered the ‘natural voice over’ sound is in big demand at the moment. Having said that, I’ve added ‘voiceover’ sounding samples in there as I often get requests for ‘that voiceover’ sound! There are corporate, documentary, explainer, e-learning and commercial samples in this reel.

Complicated Names

There is a medical voiceover sample in there, too. I’ve added that to demonstrate how I handle complicated and hard to say names etc. If you can do medical voiceovers and make it sound like you know what you’re talking about, then you’ve nailed it as the names of some of the drugs are just toooo complicated. In situations like that, its so much help having a client sit in on the session via ipDTL.

Final Words

Hope you like the new voiceover demo! If you need to hire a voiceover artist with a studio, drop me a line via the contact page. I offer a professional voiceover service and fast turn around at a competitive price.

If you’ve not heard of ipDTL, it runs on Google Chrome and enables the client (you) to listen in and direct a voiceover session with me, as I voice your script at my studio in London, from wherever you maybe in the world! You get a high quality feed, as if you’re in the studio with me, but nothing you say gets recorded.

Ultimately, this saves time and money – there’s no travelling to a studio, no going backwards and forwards on email/phone trying to get it just right. Having you in on a session means we can nail the voice over in one go, and you get exactly what you’re after.

Once the session is finished, I’ll edit the audio down and Dropbox it over to you, in your choice of format. Or, you can record it your end, if you prefer.

Step 2

Step 3

You’ll then see the main ipDTL interface, that looks like this…

…and that is it, you’re done! I’ll see when you’ve logged in and say hello.

The simple ipDTL interface

1.clicking on the mixer icon in the top right of the screen (circled in red, below) will bring up a little mixing desk. You can adjust the volume here and select which audio source to use (it will usually select this for you, but if you’re using an external sound card, you may need to adjust it manually).

2.There is also a chat area (circled in blue, above) where you can upload files, new scripts or just make notes and send them to me as I voice, in case you don’t want to interrupt the flow.

Lets get this voiceover done!

And that is it, super easy to use and real quick to get started! If you need to hire a voiceover make sure they have ipDTL, it’ll make the project run so much more smoothly.

If you have any questions or would like to book in a voice over session with me, simply fill in the form on the contact page and I’ll get back to you.

Want to have ipDTL in your studio?

https://neilwilliamsvoiceover.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/F991b9HUSlfJ6zt8y4iT_How-to-do-a-voiceover-using-ipDTL.jpg380450Neilhttps://neilwilliamsvoiceover.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Logo.pngNeil2016-03-05 00:10:592019-03-19 16:57:13How to do a voiceover using ipDTL

Hiring a voice over online, who has a studio, is easy! It’s far simpler, quicker and cheaper than if you hired one through an agent.

A voiceover agent is just the middleman who adds a fee on top, bumping up the cost. If you hire through an agent, you’re also likely to have to hire a recording studio – again, more expense. Better to go direct to the voice over talent.

Neil is a British male voice over artist who’s been recruited by companies and individuals around the world to provide an English voice over for a vast range of projects – all hired online. He offers a professional voiceover service – voicing, recording and editing from his studio based in London, England.

How to hire a voice over online in just three steps:

1) Make contact with Neil to discuss the project and quotes. 2) Send Neil the script 3) Receive your audio, in your choice of format, ready to be used.

It’s that simple, really!

If you need to hire a voice over artist with studio, you can get started right now! In most cases you’ll receive the audio back within 24 hours. There is also no extra charge for minor script changes or re-takes.

Recently I’ve been working with lots of different clients who have commented on how easy its been working with me. Obviously chuffed to hear that, and got me thinking that if you need a voice over, theres an easy way and hard way to get it done…

The Hard Way (worst option)

Dont pull your hair out if you need a voice over done, do it the easy way.

If you need a voice over and have nothing better to do with your time, along with an unlimited budget then you might actually pick this option! It does involve lots of extra work on your (clients) part – you have to find a voiceover to start with, possibly using a pushy voiceover agent who’s going to add their fee on top. Find a studio thats free on a date you want to record and a date that the voice talent is available. Then hire a studio engineer to run the desk and record the session. Once the voice over session is done, if you need anything re-voiced or there is a script change at a later date, you have to go through the entire process again. Very time consuming and costly.

The Easy Way (best option)

Contact me with your script and what you’re after…then just sit back and relax, I’ll deliver your audio directly to you, usually same day. And any re-takes or minor script changes will be done swiftly and usually for free!

With a broadcast quality voice over studio on hand and over 15 years experience, I’ll save you time and money by offering a one stop voice over service – recording, editing and delivery of your audio. You can also listen in and direct the voice over session via ISDN, ipDTL or Skype at no extra cost…all without moving from your desk (unless you want to grab a coffee whilst relaxing 😜)

Need to hire a voice over? Call 0330 12 00 118 or tell me what you’re after here. Look forward to working with you soon.

What makes the perfect voice over showreel?

Every voice over wants to know the answer to this question. Every voice over probably has their own idea of an answer! For me, I think this deserves the same answer as the question ‘how long is a piece of string?’ Below is my latest voice over showreel, check it out, tell me what you think…would you hire me from hearing it?

If you’d like to hire me after hearing that, phew, it worked 😉 contact me and lets talk….if you’re here to find out how to make a great voice over showreel, read on.

How long is a piece of string?

Voice over showreels are subjective. You could put together what you think is your best voice over work in the world, a mixture of everything you’ve done that you’re really, super proud of. Then a client/producer will listen to it, maybe just the first 10 seconds of your minute long masterpiece of a showreel, and think to themselves ‘yeah, its alright’ before moving onto the next showreel.

What was wrong with my voice over showreel?

But hang on, you slaved away over that voice over showreel for ages, it was brilliant, it deserved an award for being so good, why didn’t the producer like it? Don’t take it personally, you just weren’t what they were after, today! Next week the same producer, working on a different project, could listen to your voice over reel, more than 10 seconds this time, and think it really is brilliant, you are the voice they want and boom, you’re hired. Happy voice over.

How do I make a great voice over showreel then?

This is the million dollar question. For me, there is no strict answer here, one shoe doesn’t fit all. There are some generic guidelines for making good showreels, I’ll run through those shortly. My answer would be to have showreels for different types of work, showcasing how brilliant you are in each of them. From a commercial showreel for radio, tv and cinema commercial voice overs, to a corporate voice over showreel showing of different styles for corporate video work onto a documentary showreel, narration, on-hold/IVR reel etc etc.

Thats a lot of showreels!

You’re right, it is, but you’re a pro, you can do these and super serve the client, giving them exactly what they want. If you pop into a shop and ask for eggs and the guy gives you ham, you’re not going to be to pleased and will be unlikely to shop there again. Same for voice overs, if a client/producer is casting for an commercial and you send them a generic showreel with lots of different work on it, they’re unlikely to listen to it all, and if you’re lucky just the first 10-15 seconds (thats the reality, these people are busy and have lots to do). If you haven’t caught them in that short time space, you’ve lost the job. By sending a specific commercial showreel, and letting the producer know thats what it is, they’ll take a little more note and interest in what you’ve done, unlike every other voice over who’s just send a generic voice reel with a standard introduction.

But how do you know what the client wants?

There are a number of ways to get voice over work, one of them is for websites that let you ‘pay to play’, subscription based voice over sites where you pay a monthly or yearly fee for the pleasure of being listed on there. Clients then post jobs on the site, there is then a made scramble by the voice overs to get a demo in before the job closes. Voices.com and Voice123.com are two of the better ones, there are many, many out there. Lots of them will just take your money and you’ll get nothing, I always advise doing a little research before parting with your hard earned cash. One voice over site approached me, asking if Id like to join. The site had brilliant reviews, claiming that within hours ‘big agencies had been in touch offering work’. After doing a little digging I found that the people who gave those reviews were no longer members of the site, in fact all four people who’d left reviews were no longer members. Why? I tracked one of them down and asked. He told me that ‘yes, the big agency did get in touch’….he got one job, after that, nothing.

When using these sites, you really have to be on the ball and either, have a home studio set-up and ready to record samples or have different demo’s ready, depending on the clients request – be it a commercial, corporate, on hold, e-learning, narration etc etc job. And there we come full circle to having lots of different showreels ready. From my radio presenting days, a saying always sticks in my mind ‘always have a bed to lie on’, which basically meant always have a demo ready, you never know when you’re going to need it.

Putting together a Voice Over Showreel – the basics

Here we go with three basic tips for making a showreel, these are almost golden rules…

Don’t go on forever – as I mentioned earlier, clients/producers are busy. You may have lots of brilliant audio you want to put into your showreel, but the reality is they’re only going to hear the first 10 – 15 seconds, maybe not even that. Put your best bits at the beginning and keep the entire demo no longer that a minute and a half, a minute or less would be perfect. By keeping it short, you’re also keep the size of the file small, perfect for emailing!

Levels – get your audio levels matched. Make sure all the audio in your showreel is at the same level, theres nothing worse than having to turn up the volume to hear a soft piece only for the next segment to deafen you as its to loud. Its also very unprofessional and shows you don’t really know what you’re doing with the equipment.

Don’t clump sample styles together, and keep them short – The idea of the showreel is to show of what you can do, so don’t stick all your chilled out, laid back stuff at the back, with all your upbeat stuff at the front. Mix it up and keep it short, don’t be afraid to chop things down to size, ten seconds of this, seven seconds of that. The person listening isn’t necessarily interested in what the topic is, they want to hear how you sound..and you need to get as much of that across as quickly as possible.

In my experience, if you follow the three simples rules, you won’t go far wrong with your voice over showreel.

If you’ve got any questions, just leave a comment below.

Neil

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ipDTL, you heard about it yet?

I’m now a fully signed up ipDTL voiceover, with Link+, but whats it all about? Read on to find out, or head straight to the bottom to try ipDTL for FREE!

I read something about it last year(2013), it won an award, didn’t really take much notice as theres always new innovations winning awards, then they just disappear, never to be heard of again.

This one cropped up again following a conversation with a voiceover friend who asked if Id thought about getting it. My ears pricked up when he said it was as good as, if not better than, ISDN for voiceovers and a fraction of the price.

ISDN in the UK isn’t cheap, I don’t think it is anywhere. As a voiceover, I have it so I can do remote voiceover sessions for studios and producers around the world. Its the industry standard for doing that kind of work, does the job, and the work I get using it, ensures that it pays its way. I was sceptical about this new ipDTL and it being as good as ISDN over the internet, at a fraction of the cost, so I decided to investigate further.

Who are these guys?

ipDTL comes from the In:Quality team, a new company that was only set up last year, already they are doing stormingly well. The idea behind ipDTl was originally for remote radio and tv contribution, it soon became apparent that it would be great for voiceover artists too.

The Tech side of it…

The tech behind ipDTL involves WebRTC (Real Time Communication) on Google Chrome, basically enabling browser-to-browser applications, such as video chat and voice calls, without plugins. You can currently only use ipDTL via Google Chrome.

But how good is it?

In a nutshell, very good! Before purchasing the HQ Audio Login (with audio at 128kbit/s) I tested it against my ISDN, I wanted to make sure it lived up to the claims. We played music down both lines, ISDN and ipDTL, along with dry voiceovers. The results were brilliant. The audio was crystal clear, the delay/lag on the ISDN was slightly more than on ipDTl, yes, you read that right, the delay was more on ISDN.

Whilst the ISDN had a solid connection throughout the tests, the ipDTL did drop out a few times, which did put a downer on things. But, we didn’t give up on it because of that. After logging off and reconnecting, making sure we were hard wired to the router, rather than wi-fi, and that there was minimal traffic on the network, we reconnected. This time, it worked like a charm, no dropouts and the audio sounded fantastic.

Do you need super fast broadband?

No! Despite the dropouts we experienced, you don’t need a mega fast connection. We tested it on ADSL and Fibre Optic Broadband. The upload speed of your connection is the more important one, to run 128K voiceover session, you need a minimum upload of between 700 – 800 kb. We tested it on a connection thats capped at 1mb upload, the speed reading was 837k, it worked very well, with no dropouts at that speed.

Is it easy to set-up?

Incredibly! Once we’d signed up, got the login and installed Google Chrome, we were away. One person logs in to the account(for example the voiceover), the other person(studio/producer) gets a link to click on. The voiceover, in this scenario, clicks call and you’re connected instantly. With a few minor system preference adjustments for routing sound, input and output, we were done. The voiceover could be heard clearly, as could the studio, enabling talkback.

What does Link+ mean?

At time of writing, when you sign up for an account, you only get one login, which means you have to buy a separate link if you want to work with other people via ipDTL, unless they have their own login. Link+ simply means that I’m ready to do voiceovers with anyone that needs them, I just send them the link+ I have, they click it on and we’re connected. The Link+ is useless without you logging in, so don’t worry about other people using something you’ve paid for.

I think Ive covered everything there, its basically the end for ISDN and the beginning of something brilliant for voiceover artists. If you’ve got any questions about how I use it, do leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you. Or get in touch with me via the booking page.

If you need a voice over, wherever you are in the world, I can now do it for you, all you need is google chrome and we’re away. Book a session here.

The road to voiceover success is an interesting one!

I was at a studio recently where an intern asked about becoming a professional voice over artist and how it works. He saw the ‘voices’ coming in, recording and going. He basically thought “that looks easy, I want some of that”!

We went and grabbed a coffee and I filled him in on becoming a voiceover artist, trying my best not to put him off – after all, being a voiceover is LOTS of fun and one of the best jobs in the world. My other favourite job was working at TGI Fridays when I was a student, I had such a good time! Anyways, back to the road to voiceover success.

This kind of set-up is great…if you’re a journalist on the go! However, using it to record professional voiceovers won’t get you very far!

People, naturally, have different views on it. If you speak to a non-voiceover artist, they’ll tell you that being a voiceover is easy – just get a microphone and start recording. Some don’t even think you need a professional microphone and that recording it straight into your iPhone on an app is fine!

I’d love to see the look on my clients’ faces if I sent them that one day. “Here’s your audio. Sorry about the noise in the background, the dog wouldn’t shut up. Hope it’s okay. Oh and here’s my invoice. Worth every penny!!” Somehow I don’t think I’d be getting repeat work from them!

It’s not about just buying a decent microphone either. There are lots of other factors that come into play to make you a successful voiceover artist, from the type of pre-amp you use, to the sound-proofing in your studio, whether you have an agent or not, what your showreel is like, how good your marketing is…the list goes on and on. I’ll start with one of the most important considerations – equipment.

The road to voiceover success: equipment

The type of pre-amp you use for the microphone can have a big impact on how the microphone sounds and, as a result, how your voiceover sounds. Forgive me if I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but, in case you don’t know, microphones need power and, in a nutshell, that’s what the pre-amp does. A small unit like the AudioKontrol 1 will plug into your computer’s USB. From there it will provide 48V of power to the microphone. It’ll work, but the quality really won’t be right for a professional voiceover. It’s best used for recording instruments. In my studio, I use a focusrite pre-amp, which has been designed for voiceovers.

Audio Kontrol 1 sound card will provide power for the microphone, but its not good enough quality for voiceovers.

The editing software is also very important. There are lots of different audio editing software options available, from free stuff to really expensive stuff. At a basic level, they pretty much all do the same thing – edit audio. What you’re paying for is the bells and whistles; the extras that they can do, from adding effects, to processing, multitrack etc etc. If all you want to do is edit your audio, and you don’t need anything flashy, then Audacity is going to be for you. It’s free and does the job. I use a mixture of Pro Tools and Audition. Why two? Well, I grew up using Cool Edit (now called Audition). I know it like the back of my hand and can whizz around it with my eyes closed. As my voiceover career grew, I needed more, and moved to the industry standard, Pro Tools. I love what Pro Tools does, but I know Audition so much better. Don’t get something just because others says it’s amazing – you’ve got to be able to use it too, and get the full use out of it.

The computer you use is also going to play a part in how successful you are as a voiceover artist. If you’re going to be recording and editing large audio files on an old computer, is going to REALLY slow you down as the computer tries to keep up with what you’re doing. That will eat into your voicing time and, as we all know, time is money. You need something that’s got the power to handle what you need to do. Most half decent computers will hack it (there maybe a little lag) but, if you’re starting out, you should go with the best you can afford. It’ll pay off in the long run. Personally, I use a Mac and a MacBook Air when I’m on the go. The Mac sits in the office and can handle anything I throw at it. The MacBook Air is also really good. Touch wood it hasn’t failed me yet and I’ve successfully taken it on the road with me when voicing and editing.

And, finally, the microphone. Using a ‘cheap as chips’ microphone from Maplin will NOT make you a voiceover success. Using a USB microphone that says it’s “perfect for voiceovers and podcasts” will NOT make you a voiceover success. Spending thousands of pounds on a microphone that the sales guy told you was “the best on the market”will probably be a really good microphone, but is a waste of money for you what you’ll be using it for. The microphone is a personal thing. I went to a microphone shop (yes they exist), and spent ages trying out the different microphones and hearing how they sound.

Neumann TLM 103 Microphone

I eventually went with the Neumann TLM103 for my studio, mainly because I love the sound it produces. It picks up everything it needs to, has a low self-noise level, reproduces my voice in a beautiful way and, basically, just sounds brilliant! I’m not going write about all the different microphones out there, as many people have done that before.

There’s quite a lot there to be starting with, and I’ve got work to do, so I’ll carry this on in a part 2 of ‘the road to voiceover success’.

If you’ve got any questions, or are after advice, drop me a line. I’m always happy to help. Contact me here.

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Male Voice Over Artist

Neil is an English voice over artist with over 15 years experience, recording audio for clients at his studio in London, England. He offers voice over services online, at a competitive rate, for corporate projects, commercials, e-learning, podcasts & more.